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What is true about a person? Would I change in the same way the river changes color but still be the same person?... And then I realized it was the first time I could see the power of the wind. I couldn't see the wind itself, but I could see it carried water that filled the rivers and shaped the countryside.

Amy Tan

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Amy Tan
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: February 19
Essayist
Film Writer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Oakland
California
Amy Ruth Tan
Time
Power
Filled
Still
Couldn
Countryside
Persons
Wind
Shaped
Person
Color
Carried
Firsts
Water
River
First
True
Realized
Way
Stills
Rivers
Would
Change
Changes

More quotes by Amy Tan

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Then she told me why a tiger is gold and black. It has two ways. The gold side leaps with its fierce heart. The black side stands still with cunning, hiding its gold between the trees, seeing and not being seen, waiting patiently for things to come. I did not learn to use my black side until after the bad man left me.
Amy Tan
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You see what power is holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.
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The muse appears at the point in my writing when I sense a subtle shift, a nudge to move over, and everything cracks open, the writing is freed, the lanuage is full, resources are plentiful, ideas pour forth, and to be frank, some of these ideas surprise me. It seems as thought the universe is my friend and is helping me write, its hand over mine.
Amy Tan
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You have to be your own person. You can't let people's opinions determine how you think about yourself. There's a difference between identity and self-identity.
Amy Tan
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I have loved works of fiction precisely for their illusions, for the author's sleight-of-hand in showing me the magic, what appeared in the right hand but not in the left.
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It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.
Amy Tan
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I have a writer's memory, which makes everything worse than maybe it actually was.
Amy Tan
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Your only shame is to have shame.
Amy Tan
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I didn't fear failure. I expected failure.
Amy Tan
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Sure I loved him - too much. And he loved me, only not enough. I just want someone who thinks I'm number one in his life. I'm not willing to accept emotional scraps anymore.
Amy Tan
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I would still like to have that luxury, to be able to just sit and draw for hours and hours and hours. In a way, that's what I do as a writer.
Amy Tan
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Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.
Amy Tan
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Memory feeds imagination.
Amy Tan
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Now I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees. I became an unseen spirit.
Amy Tan
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I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary we did not have any books in the house.
Amy Tan
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You can get sucked into the idea that, 'Gosh, this is impressive. Maybe I should do this. It will look good.' Or 'I'll write like this because it will impress that critic.'
Amy Tan
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People there only dream that it is China, because if you are Chinese you can never let go of China in your mind.
Amy Tan
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You can't have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences? Saving fish from drowning. Same thing. Who’s saved? Who’s not?
Amy Tan
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While it is good to speak well, it is better to speak the truth.
Amy Tan
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Whenever my mother talks to me, she begins the conversation as if we were already in the middle of an argument.
Amy Tan